Strasbourg Itineraries

The Cruise was very well organized, personnel were polite and efficient. Cruise Director and Cruise Manager were outstanding. This is our second time having Galia as Cruises manager and as always she was very professional, effective and caring. The ship was excellent as well, well maintained and well managed. All its personnel were well trained and did their job very effectively. The food was excellent with enough variety to satisfy all tastes.The local tour guides were good, some better than others, but all did their job and conveyed the information as needed. Galia and the ship personnel were extremely attentive and helpful upon our disembarkment, they called us a taxi and made sure the driver understood our final destination. Our congratulations to SmarTours for, once again providing a most rewarding experience

Very good value for the money. Sicilian chef had a varied menu for each meal. We are vegetarians and had something different for each meal which is a rarity! Unlimited beer and wine at lunch and dinner were definitely enjoyable! The ports of call were beautiful although most of the local tour guides were on a mission to tell you what they knew and didn’t want to address our questions. However, Otto in Koblenz was amazing! The tour guide in Rotterdam was actually rude and combative when a fellow traveler informed him that we couldn’t hear him when he turned his head. The guide reprimanded him and told him he should have informed him sooner! We left the group after that. The keyboard player in the evening was good but he needs to expand his repitoire of music because by the third night he was repeating the same songs. The crew was attentive and helpful. The ship very clean and the room size was rather spacious for a river boat. This being a Russian vessel, the only TV channel, RTV was totally right wing.

Traveling from Belgium through 6 countries to Switzerland is one of the most amazing travel experiences in Europe, especially if traveling with Grand Circle Travel. The ship's crew and staff are the most professional and personable folks that I've ever had the fortune to travel with. Not only have I traveled European rivers with these folks once, but have done so several times. For a single traveler, traveling with Grand Circle is a great bargain, as there is very seldom an extra charge for traveling solo and if their is, the price is very modest. You can't go wrong with these folks.

Our week was lovely and relaxing. We didn't try to do too much on any one day and limited our travel so that we never went south of Colmar/Eguisheim nor further north than Haut-Koenigsbourg. We enjoyed lunches everyday in cafes sitting in the sun and ate our evening meals at our apartment. We were quite surprised by how "German" the area was. We heard more German than French some days. Not much English, which was fine, as the Alsatians were so polite and worked hard to understand my very limited French. Alsace is a very unique area of France and quite a contrast to Provence where we spent our second week. I liked that Alsace is a relatively undiscovered part of France - or at least seemed that way when were were there in late Sept/early October. The only time we heard other Americans was when we walked through Riquwihr which was a bit too "toursity" for my tastes. The grape harvest was getting underway and the tractors on the highways forced everyone to slow down. It's hard to explain to someone how completely devoted the Alsace area is to wine production. We were in Beblenheim which had at least 5 wineries in it's little town.